PQ slammed over shale gas

‘Ideology has no place’ in job creation, Bouchard tells group

Lucien Bouchard ratcheted up his rhetoric in support of imminent shale gas development in Quebec before a partisan crowd Tuesday.

The former Parti Québécois premier took broad swipes at the incoming PQ government in his speech to the industry group he now heads.

“If we launch new studies (related to shale gas development) before the previous ones have landed, we will never finish,” he told the Quebec Oil and Gas Association’s annual conference.

A committee of experts, government and industry representatives is now working on a strategic environmental assessment that sprang from a six-month study by the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE).

That assessment may land on the desk of the rookie PQ natural resources minister next year or perhaps in 2014, Bouchard said.

Such a pace is not appropriate in a province that needs money for universities and bridge repairs, he said.

“Are we so rich that we can thumb our noses” at job creation and resource development, he asked during a speech whose cadence was reminiscent of Bouchard on the election campaign circuit.

Other jurisdictions in North America and Europe see shale gas development as a form of job cre-ation and as environmentally friend- ly, he said, citing the U.S. president’s plan to develop the resource.

Martine Ouellet, Quebec’s new natural resources minister and a former environmental activist, was among the masses of Quebecers who took part in waves of recent protests against shale gas development.

In September, on her way into her first cabinet meeting, Ouellet told reporters that she did not “see the day when there will be technologies allowing the safe extraction” of shale natural gas.

In his speech, Bouchard said that to protest and to block something simply for the sake of blocking it is not a sensible, rational option in the face of compelling scientific studies that show shale gas development has positive attributes.

“Ideology has no place in the creation of jobs,” he said.

The initial BAPE report, issued in March 2011, said government estimates were that shale gas could bring in $21 billion in revenues and create 6,100 jobs.

It also said that industry had invested $200 million in Quebec at that point.

RYAN REMIORZ/ THE CANADIAN PRESS Former Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard, head of the Quebec Oil and Gas Association, speaks at the organization’s annual meeting Tuesday.